The Third Way
by Rabble Rouser
Summary: T'Pol tries to deal with her betrothal in a uniquely Vulcan way. A Coda to


The Third Way

By Rabble Rouser

Date: November 7, 2001 

Note:  I swore off ENTERPRISE after the _The Andorian Incident_ and _Breaking the Ice_ and then Djinn has to get me thinking damn her! Thanks also go to her for a lightning quick beta.

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To be human is to choose. So says Commander Tucker.  Such is not our way. No, that is not quite true. We can choose but we have made the cost so high that is it easier to walk the path set for us. 

Yes, T'Pol of Vulcan, you too can choose.  See here the level walk with signs every standard length.  From here your destination is visible below. If you stay on the path, there will be plenty before you to tell you of any problems ahead. But of course there will not be any such problems for the road has been paved smooth by the millions who have traversed it over the millennia.

You do not have to tread that path. Others have strayed. But they have not left any trace for their tracks have been carefully covered. You only know them by the sudden silences, the name mentioned only to be quickly passed over, your questions left unanswered. 

Remember Cousin Vanktet? A most promising scientist he was held out to you as a model. Then one day you asked a question of mother to find he no longer existed. He had not died, not become missing. Your mother and father simply professed to not know of him when just a week before his findings regarding the Orion ruins had been the subject of much discussion. When you looked up his paper in the datanet, you found the article was now under another name. All reference to Vanktet from his journal articles to his com code was gone. It is dangerous to leave the path to wander into a trackless desert.

I did not of course tell the commander the entire truth. I was...concerned he would mention the savage alternative the Andorian alluded to. For though the Andorian may have heard a corrupt version of our traditions he was not entirely wrong.  I could come to the ceremony prepared to challenge. Assuming I could find a champion willing to fight and kill for me. And whether he won or not I would become property for having dared to challenge the marriage and then where would be my choices? The commander was closer to the truth then he could possibly know when he spoke of slavery.

I have chosen a third alternative.  I can postpone things further. It is not yet after all the time of madness, of pon farr. Although...

I suspect indeed that I am not the only one of this pair who is reluctant. There have been times...periodically I have felt a disruption...a strong tug. I would feel myself drawn to the place of marriage or challenge and yet not hear the communication I expected. There were other telltale symptoms in my body but muted in a very characteristic way.

It is one way; a way of limbo that is made possible by our pride and our cultural dictates that protect our privacy. He has simply diverted his passions elsewhere—to some other willing person until he is ready to form a family. And I will not question it. I will live in a limbo state without the marriage bond or the family and the carefully banked passions we are allowed within it. I will not be married nor will I divorce. But some measure of freedom I will have.

This is, in it's way, a very Vulcan way of choice. We are compared to most species long-lived. It gives us patience.  It is the way of Moreek son pan, of the wind-with-the-sand, the way of Surak. We have been accused of being a stubborn people. We do not oppose. We do not choose to be an enemy. We do not change. We can instead just stand still and wait for conditions around us to change. Who knows what may happen in the course of the next few years?

So I will send a message and say I have obligations here. Worded carefully I can remind my fiance's family that haste is unseemly in a Vulcan and five or so years a small portion in the span allotted us.

I feel a serenity steal over me that eluded me in meditation as I compose the message. I do not know why this should be. There has not been a day on this ship when I have felt real peace. Not a day when my assumptions have not been disrupted, my loyalty challenged, and my every act questioned. And yet I found myself...affected by the commander's pledge to keep my confidence. For the first time, I felt uniquely visible—as if he at last saw me rather than a representative of an entire people. 

I felt indeed a strange discomfort sitting today watching Archer and Captain Vanik. An impatience with both of them, Human and Vulcan, so frozen in different kinds of arrogance. And yet between the two it flashed through my mind that it was Archer I would prefer to serve with. For Archer is capable of learning while so many of us have come to believe we have already learned all that we need. 

I am no longer of that mind. I am Vulcan and I value my heritage. I am not of a mind to change. I do not know if I there is anything I can bring back to Vulcan from what I learn among the humans. It is simply that I no longer assume that I know there is not.

I wonder what they would make of it if I told them I have stopped taking the odor suppressant. It is not so much that the human smell is so noxious as that it is so strong. We are not used to dealing with intensity. Colors, sounds, odors, tastes...emotions. Ah yes now that I've stopped taking the suppressant the tastes are so much stronger. I have started sampling some human food. I am not sure yet what to make of it. I believe it's an acquired taste.

The End 


End file.
